This invention relates to a method and system for communicating between an automatic meter reader (AMR) and a remote location over a non-dedicated communication line. In particular, it relates to a method and system in which data on competing uses of a communication line are collected, the data is analyzed to determine the times of minimal usage, and information is transmitted between an AMR and a remote location during those times.
Meters are used by the electric power, gas, and water supply industries to measure the quantity of a commodity that is consumed at a particular location. While meters may be read manually by a human meter reader who goes to each meter, this is an inefficient procedure and is gradually being replaced by AMR that transmit usage information to a remote location. If the meter is read using an AMR, a single dedicated communication line is usually required to allow the meter system to function efficiently. In such systems, the AMR is the only user of the communication line and is able to connect directly at any time with the host network.
Chartwell (The Chartwell AMR Report, 2000 5th edition, Chartwell Inc., 2964 Peachtree Rd, NW Suite 250, Atlanta, Ga. 30305), shows a comparative industry survey of all the major existing energy management companies in the United States, including ITRON, DCSI, HUNT, and SEMPRA, and indicates that most of them use a dedicated telephone system to communicate between their energy meters and their host computer systems. The cost of having a second dedicated telephone line is about $20 monthly for minimal basic service; for businesses it can be much more. Since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has determined that there are in excess of 105 million households in the United States (over 94 percent of all households) with phone lines, the annual cost of that number of dedicated lines would be in the billions of dollars, which would, of course be included in the cost of electrical service.
Numerous inventions have been proposed for the utility metering industry that focus on various communication problems between AMR devices and remote locations.
NERTEC Inc. of Quebec, Canada (www.nertec.com) provides a telereader AMR device which shares a customer telephone line and calls in at preprogrammed times to the AMR station to report the electric usage data.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,852 teaches a method in which message transmission between the AMR device and the host is initiated at random times by a random generator algorithm within a microprocessor at the device.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,618, a system is described for storing utility data and then transmitting the data from the user premises at pre-determined times via a telephone connection.
Patent application publication no. US2001/0010032A1 provides a very complicated energy management system, which encompasses a local area network, control modules and various sensors all controlled by computers, which communicate with the utility system by a variety of communication modes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,849 provides a meter interface unit, which allows the automatic reading of the utility usage at the telephone office in response to an interrogation request from the telephone control office. This system sends the meter data to the central telephone office when the subscriber's phone line is on-hook.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,642,635 publishes the use of a two tone oscillators to read stored utility data over the phone lines. An inhibit circuit is used to inhibit the use of the line when the phone is in use or when there disturbances on the line.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,892, a clock is used to trigger a connection with the central utility computer to transfer the AMR information. The AMR device has circuitry built-in, which distinguishes the ringing signal from the central unit as opposed to a typical voice phone call. If there is no specific ring signal, it is assumed that it is a normal customer call and the AMR device does not answer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,602 provides for a rather complex system in which utility AMR data is combined with a system based on the telephone billing system to form an integrated system for unified billing of telephone and utility consumption metering.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,087 provides a scheme and method to monitor telephone usage in real time and to use this data in the management of a telephone network.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,729 combines the accumulated historical usage of a cell phone customer and its current use using statistical and pattern analysis to determine whether the current use is fraudulent.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,155,763, telephone call centers use neural networks and other analytical means to automatically determine slow and fast periods of the day, week, month, and year for telephone solicitation calls based on prior calling data results.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,345 promotes the use of risk analysis and past calling history to develop a model to control fraudulent telephone calls.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,240,291 B1, a neural network technique is described to hand off cell phone transmissions between cell towers based on a pattern recognition algorithm using the current signals emanating from mobile phones and the historical signals stored in a database to decide whether to handoff or not.